In what I hope will become a half-yearly tradition, I am presenting to you the highlights of the new crop of Tentative Sites that have been submitted in the second half of 2025. The first 6 months were covered here.

Keeping the Tentative Lists on this website up-to-date is important to me: there is no other independent place on the web that does so. Even on the UNESCO website, the topic is covered quite poorly, with no tracing of the lifecycle of the sites, no photos and no maps or validation of geodata (all of which we aim to provide).

The Numbers

2025 has ended with 1807 Tentative Sites (TWHS). In the second half of 2025, 49 were added. 12 of those were replacements of earlier ones. Only 1 TWHS was fully removed and became a Former TWHS (European Paper Mills, Italy).

As with the first half of 2025, the number of new sites listed is significantly above average.

It is hard to keep a perfect track of the numbers, since the UNESCO Bureau often adds sites retrospectively. Last week, even a 2024 listing appeared (the French Beech Forests, probably it had been on hold until their …

One of the neat statistics we gather via community members on this website is the visitor rating of a WHS. After you have visited a site, you can give it a rating of 1 to 5 stars. The rating represents a mix of “WHS worthiness” and your experience on the day. If you have not rated anything so far, log in to your profile and go to Rate WHS to contribute.

While these ratings help to find the best WHS, they of course also provide insight into the worst!

The Worst 10

At the time of writing, we have 49 WHS with a weighted average score below 2 stars. You can find them at the WHS Index page, and sort by Score.

The worst-rated 10 are:

1. Tugay forests (0.38)
2. Kazan Federal University Observatories (1.01)
3. Valongo Wharf (1.17)
4. Al-Faw (1.29)
5. Battir (1.38)
6. Srebarna Nature Reserve (1.38)
7. Kuk (1.46)
8. Melka Kunture and Balchit (1.47)
9. Chongoni Rock Art (1.49)
10. The Prehistoric Sites of the Khorramabad Valley (1.52)

When this selection is adjusted to WHS that got 5 votes or more, to exclude individual voices counting too strongly, the top-10 is:

1. Kazan Federal University Observatories (1.01)
2. Valongo Wharf (1.17)
3. Battir (1.38)
4. Srebarna Nature …

2025 was my fourth year of full-time travel (read here about Day 0, Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3). It was a “Year of Calculations”, as I had a big and expensive trip to #1,000 planned late in the year. The rest of the travel year was moulded to achieve exactly the right amount of WHS at the lowest possible cost.

My best-ranked newly visited WHS of this year, all 4* or more, include Djoudj National Park, the Ahwar of Southern Iraq, Damascus, the New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands and Macquarie Island. I am also glad that I could finally experience Iraq and Syria in a peaceful setting.

You can find my updated Trip Planner here, including the actual ‘results’ of 2025. With an added total of 54 (47 new + 7 from the WHC), I am still right on track.

The best ones are behind me

It’s a tough conclusion to make, but after having seen over 80% of all current WHS, I have to accept that I have already seen the best sites. Of course, there are still some to look forward to, but there is no Angkor, Florence …

For the 8th year (almost) in a row, I am presenting a yearly overview of the reviews submitted to this website. 2025 was the year that the WHC meeting gave us some long-overdue favourites, such as Knossos and Carnac. With an average rating of 2.52, this year’s harvest is considered slightly better than the two previous years by our community members. We had a mini-meetup in Sharjah to visit The Other Emirates, and another group of intrepid WH Travellers under the guidance of Thomas visited Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines.

For the website, it was the year of the Great Migration. We have moved to a larger, more modern villa; we are still decorating all the rooms, have some boxes unpacked in corners, but are getting comfortable in our new home for years to come.

Community Travel

“1,000” is the number, as both Thomas and I reached that milestone this year, as the third and fourth members to do so, respectively. Zoë, by now, even passed 1,100!

Four members have visited more than 900 WHS (the same number as last year) and five more visited over 800 WHS (also the same as in 2024).

14 additional ones …

If you're looking for a task during the Christmas holidays, why not contribute a review or some photos to this website? I have found a couple of countries that are not that hard to visit, but haven't had a review of most of their WHS for years and/or lack good pictures of the WHS.

So if you have visited any of the following countries over the past 2 to 3 years:

• Algeria
• Bangladesh
• Cuba
• Ecuador
• Libya
• Sri Lanka

Please have a look at your archives! Pictures and Reviews can be sent via the usual ways (menu option WHS Traveller in your admin profile).

My recent journey to the Subantarctic has rekindled my interest in stories surrounding remote islands. So, while looking for a book to read on the long way home and scanning the lists of Best Non-Fiction and Best History Books of 2025, one book that caught my eye immediately was The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda by Andrew Fleming.

Like many people who have tried, I have so far never made it to the Scottish, WH-listed island of St. Kilda. People have been fascinated by the island and its human history for a long time, and cruises to St. Kilda were already a regular occurrence in the 19th century.

This book dives into the history of the islanders from the earliest times. It is filled with interesting tidbits.

A few takeaways:

• The archipelago was never truly isolated, not even in the Iron Age or before. There was contact with other islands and the mainland (including the lord of the land, and also colonists and prisoners). The population became a mix.
• The title of the book refers to the seabird feathers, the harvesting of which was the main ‘industry’ on the island since the …

My recent trip to WHS #999 (New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands) and #1000 (Australia’s Macquarie Island) was my first on an Expedition Cruise. I had selected the destination because of its remoteness. Still, I wasn’t really confident about the cruising aspect, as I am not a “water person” and do not do well mentally in confined spaces with lots of strangers. So with some hesitation, I stood at the quay of the Port of Bluff to embark on the Heritage Adventurer.

Find some tips for Cruising the Subantarctic below, both in advance and during the trip.

Preparations

Determine whether it is for you

These aren’t the “first holiday abroad” kind of trips, it requires a significant investment in money and an above-average interest in wildlife watching. To state it boldly: you spend 12 days on a ship to be surrounded by penguins for 3.5 hours. You must be able to find joy in the other things along the way as well, such as seabirds, sea mammals like elephant seals, plants and talks about the region’s conservation history. There wasn’t much else in the way of entertainment, though my ship offered kayaking, which looked good.

Save up because there will …

A fully updated Tentative List for Malawi has been publicized this week. They have gone from 5 TWHS to 7 TWHS.

New sites added:

• Karonga Fossilised Geoheritage Landscape (a dinosaur fossil site)
• Malape Pillars Geological Heritage (visually striking landscape of sandstone columns)
• Fort Mangochi and Makanjira Historical Corridor (19th-century indigenous forts; Mangochi itself is a double, as part of the Malawi Slave Heritage Route TWHS)

Nyika NP and Vwaza Marsh have been merged into one: Nyika-Vwaza Wildlife Reserve.

The other 3 sites are continuations of previous TWHS, albeit sometimes in a slightly different form. The Malawi Slave Routes are now called "Malawi Slave Heritage Route and Dr. David Livingstone Trail" and Lake Chilwa Wetland went from a Mixed proposal to a Natural one.

As always, pictures of these new sites are welcome (via uploading through Images). There is also some help needed for finding the right locations of some of them, see this forum post.

Look back at your past trip notes and photos to see if you have something covered from Kazakhstan's revised Tentative List.

New are:

• Architectural Resilience: The Anti-seismic Heritage of Almaty
• Medeu – Complex of Mudflow Protection Engineering Structures
• Monumental Monuments and Sanctuaries of the Early Steppe Tradition of Central Eurasia (Mausoleum of Kozy-Korpesh–Bayan Sulu, Ritual Structure Dombauyl, and related "Dyng" Towers)

The Almaty site includes three well-known structures in the city: the Ascension (Voznesensky) Cathedral (1904–1907), the House of Government of the Kazakh SSR (1950s–1957) and the Kazakhstan Hotel (1977).

Merged into one are:

• Petroglyphs of the Karatau Range (Arpaozen and Sauyskandyk)
• Petroglyphs of Zhetysu (Kulzhabasy, Eshkiolmes, and Bayan-Zhurek)

Four of these were previously listed as single TWHS. They had no coverage (reviews or visitors) on this website.

New Zealand is currently working on a new Tentative List; candidate sites can be submitted until January 2026. So its current Tentative List has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, I find it likely that there will be a candidate to represent the Bay of Islands (located at the northeast end of the North Island). This area holds the current TWHS of Kerikeri Basin and the TWHS of the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. Additionally, the Bay Island town of Russell has also publicly advertised its candidacy. So they might show up, either individually or as a serial site or a cultural landscape. They all relate to the same part of New Zealand history: the first decades of coexistence between the British and the Maori in the first half of the 19th century.

I visited these three sites on one day, basing myself in the town of Kerikeri.

Kerikeri Basin

Already on the drive up there from Auckland, I found that this region feels like the English countryside: green rolling hills, narrow winding roads, some livestock, and rain is never far away. Both the Maori and the British found the region’s fertile grounds and easy access by boat …